U.S. Census workers visit St. Mary Medical Center in Long Beach in 2010. Southern California officials fear their communities will be undercounted if a citizenship question is included on the 2020 census. (Staff File Photo)

City and county officials throughout Southern California fear they could lose billions of dollars in federal money for roads, housing, health care — even bookmobiles — if the 2020 census includes a proposed question about U.S. citizenship.

By law, the census is supposed to count every U.S. resident, citizens and non-citizen alike, as well as all Americans living and working abroad. It isn’t supposed to be used by immigration agencies to identify non-citizens and federal officials insist the citizenship question, if asked, wouldn’t be a push toward such a goal.

That said, the Trump administration wants the next census, which officially starts on April 1, 2020, to ask respondents whether they are or are not U.S. citizens. It’s been used in recent sampling questionnaires but it hasn’t been asked of every respondent in the full, every-10-years survey since 1950.

The question – which is being challenged in court – would be asked in a political climate widely viewed as hostile to immigrants, and advocates believe it will scare off so many potential respondents that the population of many Southern California communities would be severely undercounted.

“Under the current circumstances, this question is nothing but toxic,” said Shakeel Syed, executive director of OCCORD (Orange County Communities Organized for Responsible Development), a nonprofit agency that works with immigrants and low-income residents.

People showing up at the group’s citizenship fairs are already asking how the census might affect their loved ones, Syed said. And immigrant families, which often include a mix of people with and without legal status, are already reluctant to complete naturalization paperwork out of fear that immigration officials will use that information to track down non-citizens, Syed added.

Newly sworn-in U.S. citizens stand for the National Anthem during a ceremony at City National Grove of Anaheim in 2017. Advocates say people are wary of seeking citizenship in the current political climate. (File photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

The Trump administration has said the citizenship question — which will not include other details about legal status — is actually a bid to help ensure minority voting power, a key part of the Voting Rights Act. The Justice Dept., in a December letter to the Census Bureau, said knowing the location of non-citizens would help lawmakers ensure that voting districts don’t lump minority citizen voters in with non-citizens who, by law, can’t cast ballots.

But critics of President Donald Trump and immigration advocates, among others, contend the real goal is to take resources and political influence away from immigrant communities. That’s the basis for a lawsuit filed by more than two dozen cities and states, including California, that hope to block the question from appearing on the next census.

Who gets counted matters. Census data is used to create voting districts and to divvy up hundreds of billions of federal dollars to states. In the past year, California received more than $300 billion in federal money, much of which was passed on to cities and local schools.

That money is allocated based on population, and lower population counts mean less funding to improve parks, fight neighborhood blight and help poor residents afford housing, among other things. Census data on income levels and on residents with disabilities helps direct federal funds to school districts that serve low-income and disabled students.

And cities pass on some of their federal money to local nonprofits that serve the community, said Ofelia Valdez-Yeager, a board member for the Riverside Latino Network, an Inland-area forum for issues affecting the Latino community.

“To have those resources further reduced in this day and age is going to impact the whole community,” Valdez-Yeager said.

Some argue California already gets less than its fair share of federal money.

They describe California as a “donor” state, paying more in federal taxes – money that comes from paychecks earned by citizens and non-citizens alike – than it gets back from Washington. A state study found that in 2014 California received federal funding worth $9,172 a year per resident – roughly $1,000 less than the national average. Any undercount in the 2020 census could widen that gap.

Census data also is used to determine how many seats each state gets in the House of Representatives. A significant undercount in California could result in the loss of a House seat from state that, at the moment, overwhelmingly elects Democrats.

Hard to count

Counting some populations, including immigrants, is already difficult.

Language can be a barrier. Immigrants often are renters and renters tend to move more often than homeowners, making it harder for census workers to follow up when surveys aren’t returned or are incomplete. And immigrant children under 5 are sometimes left out of census counts, possibly because adults aren’t sure whether to include them, said Tess Thorman, a research assistant at the Public Policy Institute of California.

Add the citizenship question to those and other obstacles, and some officials expect the immigrant count in 2020 to be will be far lower than the actual number of residents.

“It’s a very controversial question. It has never been tested in terms of how the public will understand or respond,” said Arturo Vargas, chief executive of the National Association of Elected and Appointed Latino Officials, or NALEO, which is based in Los Angeles.

To show the likelihood of census undercounts by county, or in state or federal legislative districts, the Public Policy Institute used census data and projections to create an interactive map.

The map suggests a wide range of potential outcomes in Southern California — ranging from likely undercounts in about 11 percent of the census tracts in Orange County and 17 percent of the tracts in Riverside County, to similar under count results in 29 percent of the tracts in San Bernardino County and more than 33 percent of the tracts in Los Angeles County.

Some officials say the state has been shortchanged because of undercounts in previous census surveys.

The population of California was undercounted by 2.7 percent in the 1990 census, according to a recent report from the state Legislative Analyst’s Office. Over the next decade, that inaccuracy cost the state about $2 billion.

That also plays out in local communities. In Santa Ana, for example, the 2010 census indicated the city’s population had declined, a trend that seemed to contradict the actual number of people in the city. It also ran counter to the fact that the student body population in Santa Ana Unified schools grew during the preceding decade.

For Santa Ana school students, repeating such a discrepancy could matter.

Santa Ana Unified Superintendent Stefanie Phillips said federal dollars comprise up to 20 percent of the district’s budget, and when district officials go to Washington, D.C., to ask for money for preschool or Head Start programs, they need accurate population numbers.

Head Start early childhood education is among the federally-funded programs that could suffer if people avoid being counted in the 2020 census because of a proposed question about citizenship. (File photo by KURT MILLER, THE PRESS-ENTERPRISE/SCNG)

“That potential undercount could really hurt us when they are talking about supplemental programs needed on regional levels,” Phillips said.

What’s at stake

Officials say that until the data is collected it’s hard to predict the exact financial impact of any potential undercount in Southern California.

But a look at one community’s use of federal money offers a hint of what might take a hit, regionally, in the 2020s.

In the current fiscal year, the city of Anaheim is slated to get more than $100 million federal funding, a number based on a formula that included census data, said city spokesman Mike Lyster.

The bulk of the federal money in Anaheim pays for housing Section 8 vouchers, helping thousands of low-income families get shelter. The program already has a five-year waiting list.

With its larger population, Anaheim receives more federal dollars than Riverside or Santa Ana, though those cities get millions every year that pay for homeless services, park improvements and police officer salaries.

Kids look for books to check out in January at Anaheim’s bookmobile. It’s one of numerous city services that could lose funding if the 2020 census undercounts city residents. (File photo by Kyusung Gong/Contributing Photographer)

But an undercount in Anaheim would touch more than housing. Lyster noted that Anaheim also spends federal grant money on code enforcement, the Ponderosa Park community center’s homework help program, and family counseling, as well as a fire department program to give children bike helmets and the city library’s bookmobile.

All of those programs figure to be hurt if less federal money comes to the city based on faulty census numbers.

Vargas, with the Los Angeles-based political group for Latino elected officials, NALEO, suggested any undercount, intentional or otherwise, will shift financial pressure to state and local governments, who generally serve residents regardless of citizenship status.

“The fact is that these people aren’t going to go away and government is going to have to meet their needs in some way.”

When funding is lost because people aren’t counted, Vargas added, “everybody who lives in that community… gets harmed.”

Local agencies are trying to come up with a unified message to avoid confusion in communities that are at risk of being undercounted.

So far, there’s no consensus on what to say if people ask whether they should answer the citizenship question truthfully, or simply leave it blank.

“I would hope and expect — and take the federal government at its word — that they simply want to understand the population better, and they’re not going to take the information and use it to violate the Constitution and track people down,” said Jose Moreno, who sits on the Anaheim City Council.

Hoping to maximize the number of Southern Californians who will take part in the census, local officials and advocates are working on a messaging strategy. The state earmarked $40 million over the next three years to help in that effort.

Vargas said his organization is holding focus groups and conducting surveys about what the message should be, and who should deliver it. For example, are people in Southern California more likely to trust Angels or Dodgers players as spokespeople, or their local priest or rabbi?

“We’re going to saturate the market out there so that people understand the importance of being counted,” Vargas said. “Hopefully, they will realize there’s more to lose in being left out than being included.

“Whatever happens in 2020,” he added, “we’re stuck with those numbers until 2030.”

Update: Since 1950, the U.S. Census has regularly asked a small percentage of the population about citizenship status, but has not required all respondents to answer that question since 1950. This story has been updated to clarify the question’s use.

Alicia Robinson covers Anaheim for The Orange County Register. She previously spent 10 years at The Press-Enterprise writing about Riverside and local government as well as Norco, Corona, homeless issues, Alzheimer's disease, streetcars, butterflies, horses and chickens. She grew up in the Midwest but earned Southern California native status during many hours spent in traffic. Two big questions Alicia tries to answer in stories about government are: how is it supposed to work, and how is it working?